Top Email Encryption Services for Business Communications

Email encryption is an important line of defense for your business communications. Using email encryption helps organizations to prevent hackers from accessing private information when it is sent, shared, and transferred.

Is email encryption secure? Encrypted emails, if they are end-to-end encrypted, are secure throughout the entire email life cycle; from sending the email to archiving the email, it remains secure.

What Is Email Encryption?

Email encryption is much like any other form of encryption; it obfuscates the content of a message using cryptography to protect emails from theft or eavesdropping.

Traditional email is sent via plain text. This means that it travels over internet lines without encryption protections. Should anyone intercept that data and look at it, they could immediately read it. By encrypting messages, organizations can protect themselves from accidentally disclosing sensitive data.

Email is a specific form of communication that includes hidden metadata and command terms that also need to be encrypted. A few types of cryptography algorithms operate specifically for email.

These protocols include the following:

Transport Layer Security

TLS is the successor to the Secure Sockets Layer protocol. Introduced in 1999 by the Internet Engineering Task Force, TLS essentially applies encryption to transmit messages through a TLS tunneling technique: Neither sender nor receiver needs to implement it. The most common form of TLS used in communications is STARTTLS.

Pretty Good Privacy

PGP was released as an open-source technology in 1991 and thus as a free and public form of public-key cryptography. Essentially, PGP uses the unique properties of prime numbers to encode data for a user before sending it via email. The PGP scheme creates two “keys” for a user. The public key encodes data, while the private key decodes data.

Under this schema, users make their public key available to the public. Anyone who wants to send a message uses the PGP algorithms and the public key to encrypt their file. Once the receiving user gets the message, they can use their private key to decode it. Only the private key of a given pair can decode information encrypted with the public key, and it is all but impossible to reverse engineer one key from the other with current computing technology.

In order to facilitate the above, PGP uses what is known as “end-to-end” cryptography.

Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension

Also created by the IETF, S/MIME functions similarly to PGP but uses different encryption methods to support multimedia files. S/MIME is most often used for enterprise email providers.

TLS security is commonly used for general-purpose emailing, and additional encryption for messages on servers is left for unique platforms.

Benefits of Email Security for Businesses

Email security is an integral part of running a successful business. Not only does it protect sensitive information from cyberattacks, but it also helps to build trust with customers and maintain a positive brand reputation. Some of the benefits of email security for businesses include:

1. Email Security Protects Sensitive Information

Email security measures ensure that sensitive business information such as financial data, client details, and trade secrets remain confidential.

2. Email Security Prevents Cyberattacks

Email security solutions protect businesses from various cyberattacks such as phishing, malware, and ransomware.

3. Email Security Increases Trust With Customers

By securing their email communications, businesses assure their customers that the sensitive information in email and email attachments is safe and secure, whether it’s shared, stored, or archived.

4. Email Security Helps Businesses Comply With Data Privacy Regulations

Many businesses are required to comply with data privacy regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Email security solutions ensure that businesses meet these regulations and avoid hefty fines.

5. Email Security Helps Businesses Protect Their Brand

Malicious emails or data breaches that expose customer records can damage a business’s reputation and lead to loss of trust from customers and partners. Email security measures can help prevent these incidents and maintain a positive image for the business.

What Is the Best Email Encryption?

Which email service has the best email encryption? The answer may frustrate you. Ultimately, the service with the best email encryption is the one that’s most secure, easy to use, and reliable for your specific requirements. Your requirements should take into consideration variables like number of users, sensitivity of content being shared, relevant data privacy regulations, and others.

The best email encryption effectively uses strong encryption mechanisms, such as AES-256 encryption, that protect the contents of emails from unauthorized access. Ideally, the email encryption would have an intuitive user interface and workflow, requiring minimal setup and effort from the user.

The encryption should also be integrated with the email provider, so users can instantly begin using the encryption feature with no additional setup required. Additionally, the email encryption should have support for multiple platforms, including mobile devices, to ensure users can access and use the feature anywhere. Finally, for maximum security, the email encryption should feature two-factor authentication, which requires users to input both a password and a unique access code. This helps protect against unauthorized access to emails, even if the password is somehow compromised.

What Is End-to-End Encryption for Email?

End-to-end encryption is a system of communication in which only the email sender and recipient can read the email message. It involves the use of encryption keys shared only between the two users, which are used to encrypt and decrypt all messages sent between them. This prevents any third party from intercepting or being able to access the content of the messages, providing a secure communication between the two users.

End-to-end encryption for email is a type of encryption that scrambles messages directly from the sender to the recipient, and only the sender and recipient have the keys to decrypt them. The encryption prevents anyone in between, such as an email service provider or any government, from being able to read or access the emails. This helps protect the secrecy of emails and makes sure that only the sender and the intended recipient can read the contents of the email.

Why Is Email Encryption Challenging?

Because there is a difference between encryption for emails during transmission and in the server, protecting that information requires two approaches:

1. The first uses TLS to protect information during transmission. Because technologies like STARTTLS do not require data encryption at the server, STARTTLS (or other versions of TLS) is commonly used, or at least offered, by many private and public services.
2. The second uses PGP and/or S/MIME (or another form of encryption) to protect data before and after it is transmitted.

The second approach is much harder to implement than the first. In order to implement proper encryption like PGP, both the sender and the receiver must use the same protocol. That means they must use an application that includes such technology or a platform that implements it.

The challenge is that most users, especially consumers, use various third-party mail providers, like Google Gmail or Microsoft Outlook. More often than not, these providers do not offer compatibility with end-to-end encryption methods.

Automated Email Encryption for Businesses

Automated email encryption for businesses is a powerful tool that ensures the security of sensitive information sent through emails. This technology works by encrypting email content and attachments using encryption protocols, such as S/MIME and OpenPGP. It automates features such as end-to-end encryption, which protects emails from being accessed by unauthorized recipients while they are in transit or at rest. Data loss prevention (DLP) prevents sensitive data from being leaked or lost by identifying and blocking potential security threats. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) ensures that only authorized personnel can access sensitive information. Encryption key management is another important feature that automates the process of generating, storing, and managing encryption keys, which ensures that only authorized individuals can access and view encrypted emails.

Who Should Use Email Encryption?

On paper, most email compliance standards require some form of cryptography to protect personally identifiable information (PII) during transmission and when it is stored on the server. This requirement is no different for emails. Regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) call for some form of encryption.

However, messages in public services are rarely, if ever, encrypted at the server. This means that any message sent from a regulated organization would eventually end up on an unsecure server.

Consider a hospital sending protected health information (PHI) to a patient under their care. Under HIPAA regulations, PHI must always be stored in encrypted servers. However, these hospitals have no control over the types of email that their patients use, which means that they run the risk of exposing PHI and breaching compliance standards.

With that in mind, any organization handling sensitive information should use encrypted email. These organizations, however, have limited options when dealing with patients, consumers, or unregulated organizations:

• Shared email platforms: Email platforms can serve a useful purpose for organizations to control who uses them and how they are used. Utilization of shared platforms helps organizations control how messages are encrypted and sent.

• Secure email links: Since it is much easier to protect a central server, rather than attempt to coordinate secure practices, many organizations turn to content management platforms that send links over public email.These links direct users back to a portal to provide authentication credentials. As a result, data remains secure and organizations can send compliant messages to anyone regardless of their provider.

Generally speaking, different industries and regulations will require different levels of encryption for emails, many of which aren’t practicable for organizations to use as a communication method outside of their organization. That’s why many organizations, especially in areas like finance and healthcare, turn to secure email links with AES-256 encrypted servers to protect data without exposing it through email.

Kiteworks Is the Answer When Email Encryption Is Critical to Protect Your Business

Email is a critical channel for sensitive content communications, internally and externally. Unifying, tracking, controlling, and securing those email communications is pivotal to managing compliance and risk effectively and efficiently. Email encryption therefore is a top priority.

There are a lot of different options when it comes to email encryption solutions. Kiteworks is more than an email provider—it serves as a private content network platform used for governance, compliance, and security of an organization’s most sensitive content. Kiteworks secure email provides enterprise-grade encryption and uniform security controls either via an email encryption gateway and standard email clients without plugins or through a Microsoft Outlook plugin, web application, enterprise application plugin, or mobile applications. It also delivers role-based policy automation to ensure security and regulatory compliance of an organization’s most sensitive information.

The decision to encrypt or not for each email is based on automated policies rather than users and plugins, which frees up IT resources. Metadata and audit logs track all malicious exposure of private information. Existing security investments in threat scanning, anti-malware, continuous data protection (CDP), and data loss prevention (DLP) bolsters protection for inbound email communications.

Kiteworks also includes enterprise features like analytics, unlimited messaging, a 16 TB file size limit, and automated managed file transfer capabilities.

To learn how Kiteworks automates sending and receipt of email regardless of the encryption standard that is used, schedule a personalized demo.

 

Back to Risk & Compliance Glossary